You guys, I think maybe the moon is in its seventh house or its double equinox or its age of Aquarius or something, because some wacky stuff has been happening to me over the last few weeks. Well, some wacky people have been happening to me.

It's July 28th, fifteen years ago, and we meet on a beach in Connecticut. Oh, we are still so far then from where we are now—married, a mortgage, nervous plans for that second bedroom—and it's summer in suburbia, and I'm just a bored teenager who thinks nothing interesting is ever going to happen to me, and then you ride in on your bike, and it's like everything clicks on.

After that, there's a line straight down the middle of my life: a before and an after. Part A and part B. Without you, without you, without you—then with you.

Internet, I have done you a disservice. I have been married for almost two years and I have yet to show you the video of my brother and sister performing a spontaneous—yet choreographed—dance to "Baby Got Back" at my wedding while a crowd of onlookers forms a semi-circle around them and cheers at this sudden and unexpected turn of events.

I'm a sucker for creating traditions. Doesn't matter how big or small they are; I just like the ritual of doing something, again and again, because I did it that way last year. I could probably pay some psychoanalyst two hundred bucks an hour to tell me that I'm trying repeatedly to access some long-lost cadre of childhood memories through my stubborn adherence to annual ritual, but I'm pretty sure it's just that I like an excuse to make things look cute.

Now listen, I don't normally write about work, but something so embarrassing happened during my first week on the new job that I couldn't not tell you about it, because that would be wrong. I think that's blogging in a nutshell, really: me telling you about the times I did something stupid and you laughing at me.

When my sister and I took our fleeting 12-hour trip to Paris a few months ago, we thought of everything: we left extra time to get to the Eurostar station, we printed out directions to the famous flea market, we made lists of places we wanted to eat, and we listened to French podcasts on the elliptical machine to brush up on a few key phases (okay, maybe that last one was all me.) There was only one thing we forgot to check before we left: the exchange rate.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my mother, the closing line of which was this: "You must ask Tom about his almost-romance with Pippa Middleton. He was doing so well with her and then he blew it!"

First of all, I have no real verdict in the Case Of The Mysterious Dirt Piles, though I certainly do appreciate you all weighing in. At this point, I'm pretty much torn between blaming it on the gophers---although I still maintain that there are no visible holes they could have tunneled up through---and the crazy lady across the street, who is really, to be fair, another story for another time. (Like when I catch her red-handed, for example. Innocent until proven guilty and all that!

Now listen, I am no Miss Marple, but I'm pretty sure I have a mystery on my hands. Something very, very strange is happening on my street right now---more specifically, in my own front yard---and I could use your input in getting to the bottom of it. Or not even getting to the bottom of it, really, because I'm not sure we're even going to do that, but maybe you could just shake your head in bewilderment along with me. That totally counts.